National Retail Federation

Thanksgiving is over, and that means retailers are hoping you’ll put down the fork and pick up the credit card.

The holiday season can be a make-or-break time for retailers: It made up nearly 20 percent of total retail industry sales last year, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. Those stocking stuffers and sweaters added up to a whopping $453 billion, according to the NRF.

Still, it’s not always a predictable time of year, especially lately. Holiday retail sales fell sharply in 2008, in the depths of the recession, but saw a sharp gain last year.

This year, retailers are expecting holiday sales to rise by 2.8 percent, to $465.6 billion.

A large chunk of that shopping will happen over this holiday weekend, starting as early as Turkey Day itself. About 22 million shopped on Thanksgiving Day last year, according to the NRF.

Black Friday has been the biggest shopping day of the year for the last seven years, according to ShopperTrak, which estimates consumer traffic.

BIGresearch for NRF

If you do go shopping this weekend, you are quite likely to buy clothes. About half of Black Friday weekend shoppers say they purchase clothes or accessories. Books, CDs, DVDs, video games and toys are also popular items. 

BIGresearch for NRF

Related:

How Black Friday got its name and became a tradition

Avoid Black Friday madness (and still get great deals)

Michael Nagle / Getty Images file

Shoppers look for bargains at Toys "R" Us last year. The big-box chain is opening at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving this year.

Call it Black Friday fatigue.

With stores racing to open ever earlier on Thanksgiving (Wal-Mart’s doors will open at 10 p.m.!), a backlash is growing, with some retailers and analysts questioning the madness.

“The lunacy of opening at 12 midnight or even earlier on Thanksgiving evening shows that this whole Black Friday thing has run out of legs,” said IDC Retail Insights program director Greg Girard. “Black Friday is a race to the bottom, and it’s just become another ad avenue.”

Other analysts think this year's extended hours are meant to distract shoppers from a lack of exciting inventory.

“If you build it, they will come,” said NPD Group chief industry analyst Marshal Cohen, “but they won’t come in the dead of night. To me, you’re not going to sell more product just because you’re open more hours. It’s more of a smoke screen than it is a solution to the issue.”

This year, some stores are choosing not to take extreme measures to lure in bargain-hungry customers as they kick off a season that is expected to bring in about $465.6 billion in sales, a modest 2.8 percent increase over last year.

Sears, for one, has decided to pass on the trend for midnight openings set by big-box retailers including Best Buy, Kohls and Target. Toys 'R' Us is opening at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving night, an hour ahead of Wal-Mart.

Last year, Sears chose to keep its doors open on Thanksgiving from 7 a.m. until noon, with the idea that shoppers would come in early to rack up a few deals and then head home to their families for a midday meal.

But while the company did have good numbers that day, “The customer feedback was very clear,” said Sears spokesman Tom Aiello. “The customers liked the deals, but they didn’t like the idea of Thanksgiving shorted as a holiday.”

So the chain will revert to its original plan to open at 4 a.m. on Friday. “I think there’s a group of customers that don’t aspire to get up in the middle of the night,” Aiello said.

Retail chain JC Penneyalso decided to stick with a 4 a.m. opening time this year so employees can spend Thanksgiving with friends and family, according to a company spokesman.

Employees at Target and Best Buy have launched petition drives on the website change.org protesting the early openings. “A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day,” wrote petition creator Anthony Hardwick, who identifies himself as a Target employee.

Some local retailers are still undecided on their Black Friday hours and will make last-minute decisions, according to Cohen.

Others are resisting the bonanza that is Black Friday altogether—or at least, they engage in more subtlety. Seattle-based retail chain Nordstrom has avoided opening its doors on Thanksgiving throughout the company’s history and in recent years has posted signs in its stores that read, “One holiday at a time.”

Nordstrom waits until the morning of Black Friday to unveil its Christmas decorations, though it will open doors early that morning in some locations.

“It’s not as in your face,” said Forrester vice president and senior analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, “but there’s a reason that Thanksgiving weekend that people work longer hours and [the stores] pull out all the stops as far as offering sales and promotions—because that’s the nature of that weekend.”

Analyst Greg Girard of IDC said Black Friday is virtually absent from the websites of brand-oriented stores like Gap, Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor.

"And they’re doing something much more surgical in that they’re moving towards direct communications, like text messaging to consumers," he said. "They’re getting to consumers with whom they have a longer lifetime relationship."

Nordstrom, like many higher-end stores, doesn’t rely as heavily on Black Friday to make or break its sales year. Black Friday “is among our most high volume days. But it isn’t our largest sales day of the year, unlike many retailers,” said Nordstrom spokesman Colin Johnson.

Collin Morgan, the coupon-savvy mom behind Hip2Save.com, joined us for a live Web chat Thursday to answer your questions about Black Friday and saving money on holiday shopping.

Here’s one of her answers to questions from the live chat. (See below for the full Q&A.)

Marcinda asked:

"Can the better deals be found on Black Friday or Cyber Monday?"

Collin replied:

"In my opinion, Cyber Monday is better! Plus, you are not wasting gas and time since you can snag deals in your PJ's without having to deal with crowds!"

Here’s the full chat archive:

If you have a question for our TODAY Money experts, submit it here. 

To sign up for an e-mail reminder for our next chat, click here.

Are you one of those bargain-hungry consumers who braves the cold the day after Thanksgiving to venture out on Black Friday? Are you still digesting turkey when you go out in the wee hours of the night in search of the best deals at your local retail stores?

Then we want to hear from you. 

We're looking for a few seasoned Black Friday shoppers who can share their experiences —and photos — on the biggest shopping day of the year. We want to know about the bargains you're finding, the techniques you're using and the crowds you're fighting your way through during the big day.

If you’re interested in being a part of this project, please e-mail us here. Please give us some details, including where you live, what your typical Black Friday game plan is, and how best to reach you.

Selected readers will become our Black Friday spies on that day. 

Sonny Hedgecock / AP

Kmart's holiday decorations were on sale by early October.

Christmas decorations hit some store shelves while many people were still wearing shorts, and hot holiday toy lists came out just as many families were crossing off the final items from their back-to-school shopping lists.

Now there’s news that Black Friday, that national frenzy of holiday shopping, is going to be starting as early as Thanksgiving evening, with big store chains like Wal-Mart and Toys 'R' Us opening their doors even as many families are still finishing their pie and coffee.

The widening of the holiday shopping season, sometimes referred to as “Christmas creep,” may leave some people grumbling, but don’t expect it to go away anytime soon.

“Until there are really people outside stores picketing I don’t think the trend will abate, and I don’t think there’s a whole lot of downside for the retailers,” said Ted Marzilli, global managing director of BrandIndex, which tracks the public perception of brands.

Retailers are so desperate for your holiday shopping dollars after years of economic woes that they’ll try just about anything to get a bigger chunk of your limited budget, Marzilli and other analysts say. Offering deals earlier and earlier just may give some of those retailers a leg up on the competition.

“Is it really working? Too soon to tell. Can it work? The answer is clearly yes,” said Marshal Cohen, retail analyst with NPD Group.

Many shoppers already are on the lookout for deals.

A survey done in late October by YouGov BrandIndex found that nearly one-third of shoppers had already started shopping for holiday gifts. Nearly half expected to start before Thanksgiving, according to the survey, to be released this week.

That’s similar to results BrandIndex got in 2008, the last time the firm asked the question, Marzilli said.

Retailers aren’t necessarily going to squeeze much more money out of consumers by trying to get them to buy holiday gifts along with Halloween candy. Amid a weak economy and a high unemployment rate, the National Retail Federation is expecting holiday sales to increase a modest 2.8 percent this year over year-ago levels.

Retailers are hoping an early jump on promotions will allow them to steal some business from competitors who aren’t yet offering similar deals or at least snag some of their holiday shopping dollars earlier in the season, experts say.

“If the retailer can get some people thinking about Christmas sooner than they otherwise would … then (they’ve) locked up the $10 or $20 or $50 or $100 that the consumer was going to spend,” Marzilli said.

That’s one reason Black Friday has gradually expanded, with holiday-themed deals starting days or even weeks before the day after Thanksgiving.

Call all diehard Black Friday shoppers!

C. Britt Beemer, head of the consumer research firm America’s Research Group, said early Black Friday-type promotions also may be aimed at people who want a good deal but don’t want to endure the ever-earlier wake-up call for Black Friday (so named because retailers can get into the black with strong sales).

Shoppers who go to Walmart for one of its pre-holiday Super Saturday deals may pay slightly more for a flat-screen TV, Beemer said, “but they didn’t have to get up at 3 a.m.”

Still, Beemer is predicting that this year’s Black Friday will be bigger than ever.

To some Americans, getting up at dawn on Friday to go shopping is bad enough, but going shopping on Thanksgiving night is inexcusable. The activist group change.org has even started a petition to try to force retailer Target to change its plans to open at midnight on Thanksgiving rather than a few hours later early Friday.

A Target spokeswoman told msnbc.com the company still plans to open at midnight.

Cohen said the advent of social media could get the backlash effort some attention, but he doesn’t expect complaints about Christmas creep to have much effect on retailers’ plans.

“Right now we’re more concerned about getting the (European) debt crisis resolved and getting a jobs bill,” he said. “There’s so much more for people to be worried about than opening a store.”